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Workshop @ Chitra Kala Parishad

I spent an absolutely wonderful week 23rd Sept to 27th Sept 2013 teaching at Chitra Kala Parishad. I was invited to conduct a workshop on ‘Design for social Impact‘. The workshop was for the final year students of Applied Arts. I assumed it would be a cut and dried week with my sharing insights on how and why ‘The Poonchh Collection‘ came into existence. We did that, but only for an hour on the last day.

I spent five days teaching the students to think out of the box. Strangely enough, they knew the tools of the trade/ software/use of graphic tablets and so on but they they did not know much of what to do with them. I found myself giving them a crash course in Design- from concept to creation. We had a free-wheeling discussion on topics ranging from ‘What is a good client brief and how to get it’ to ‘The best way to design a poster to sell a car’. We even discussed ethical and moral issues regarding advertising. Oh! and sex!!

I then added another layer of complication- Social impact or Designing for a Social Cause while still promoting a brand that may support that cause. The class of 54 students was divided into ten groups. Each had two days to make a presentation. They would present in front of the whole class and before I gave them a critique, the rest of their peers would. To my amazement I was told that in four years they had never had a group session and never had this degree of interaction- not with their other teachers or their peers.

The presentations were delightful. And once the students got into the swing of things, it got interesting. You could actually see their thoughts churning and light bulbs going off in their heads. I had so much fun in this week. I was humbled at the love and respect they showed me.

Lunch was spent in the staff room with the other teachers sharing khana from a local restaurant. But everyday we had another very hungry visitor. This monkey 🙂 He would wait patiently for his share and if he did not get it in time, then he would put his hands through the bars and tug at the shirt of anyone who was within reach.